Something Has to Give
E-Mail: aka_jay66@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine. They belong to Jim Henson Productions.
For the most part, this is a good thing.
Feedback: Would be appreciated.
Summary: Wouldn't that involve some forethought on my part?
Note: Didn't get to reply to the comments on last chapter yet, but thought
you'd probably be *very* unhappy with me if I held the finished chapter off
until I got to them. (God knows that I would. In fact, all you writers out there?
Don't do that. Seriously. It's like kicking a puppy- a lot.)
Replies coming soon but, just so you know, I read all the comments several
times over. Then I printed them out. Soon I plan to start showing them to people
at dinner parties. Then I plan to stop being invited to dinner parties and spend
all my time at home making large freeform sculptures inspired by the comments,
which by then are tattooed over most of my body.
Or, y'know, something sane.
Part Six
It was somehow fitting that Jareth would immediately focus on her clothing.
Sarah wondered fleetingly if she could have skipped going through the labyrinth
entirely if she'd been wearing denim overalls and a shirt with unicorns on it.
Maybe Jareth would have been too horrified to allow her into his domain.
Sarah waited hopefully for his overdeveloped sense of sartorial elegance to
force him to leave. If this worked, she vowed to herself, she'd wear nothing
but golfing clothes for the rest of her life. Plaids with checks, green with
purple no fashion error was too great a sacrifice if it meant that he
would leave her alone.
Jareth didn't disappear. If anything, he seemed to be getting more solid, drawing
strength from the darkening shadows and the growing unheard heartbeat of magic
in the air.
He took a step forward and was suddenly, frighteningly, only inches away.
Sarah kept her gaze focused firmly on his shirt and found that even that wasn't
safe. Looking at the shirt was like looking into the night sky, if the night
sky was close enough to touch and almost obscenely inviting. Her hands itched
to stroke it. Of course, they also itched to slap Jareth across the face as
hard as she could. She curled her hands into fists to keep from doing either,
since both would probably produce much the same result.
"It doesn't matter if you ignore me, Sarah. " Jareth said, and she
cringed to hear her name on his lips again. "I'm not going to go away.
"
No? Damn.
"Why are you here at all?" Sarah said, keeping her head down.
Paying no attention to the question, Jareth reached out and pinched the collar
of Sarah's shirt between thumb and forefinger. His hand was a thought away from
touching her. If she swayed, even a little, she would feel his fingers against
her skin.
"Is this what you fought so hard for, Sarah?" Jareth asked. "Is
this why you refused my generous offer and ran from my world?" A contained
chuckle rumbled though him. "To have the freedom to wear truly hideous
clothing?"
Sarah's eyes closed for a moment, and she let out a heavy sigh. Inaudibly, so
did her shirt. That was it.
Leaning away from his hand, Sarah snapped her head up and looked Jareth straight
in the chin. "Look!" She said firmly. "I don't need fashion advice
from you! I won! Get out of this bathroom - the girl's bathroom
and leave me alone!"
Jareth failed to do so. This will come as a surprise to everyone who hasn't
been paying attention. Just so you all catch up, here's the gist of it: Jareth
isn't good with following orders.
Frankly, it was a tribute to his self-control that he didn't lose his cool right
there. A sardonic musical number was an almost audible hum in his throat, pushing
towards his lips, waiting to burst out. Perhaps sensing that Sarah would take
the opportunity to leave, he pushed it back. Besides, a magically transfigured
public washroom lacks a certain something in the acoustics department.
"I'm not here to upset you." Jareth said, in what was at best a half-truth.
"I'm here to give you another chance."
Even in Sarah's somewhat flustered state, that sank in. Panic overrode caution
and she raised her eyes to his with the wild hope that she would see laughter
there and know that all of this was some final joke, he was joking with her,
ha ha ha!
Because if he wasn't oh god, if he wasn't.
(An example may be helpful here for those of you who have never been through
the Labyrinth. Let's say you're cleaning the top window of your house and you
fall out. Suddenly you're falling, and screaming, and you're not thinking about
dying, you're not thinking about the pain, you're not thinking at all. Your
mind is gone; all that's left is the scream. You survive! It's a miracle. You
stumble back up to the top floor of your house with a can of black paint, heading
for that same damn streaky window. And then Death steps out of your guest bathroom,
tall and dark and cadaverous and says, "I'm going to give you another chance.
Do you want to jump again? Or would you rather that I pushed you this time?
Your choice. ")
So when Sarah looked into Jareth's eyes she wasn't trapped in them, as she had
been so many times before, by the lacework of his lashes and the endless mirrored
halls of his eyes. Fear gave her strength.
"I don't want another chance to go through the Labyrinth." Sarah said
very politely, very quietly, hoping that he could sense the truth of it. "Never.
I'll never do that again."
She turned to leave and found that Jareth had moved when she wasn't looking.
He was even closer now, leaning forward with his hands resting on the wall to
either side of her, effectively trapping her. She couldn't breathe; he was too
close.
"You can't leave yet." Jareth said. "That's not what I'm offering
you this time."
His smile was wolfish and not just because of the pointed canines. It had very
little to do with the physical and everything to do with energy. Power rippled
off him in waves, power with no limits but Jareth's will. It filled the air
like an unseen smoke; Sarah felt the sparking touch of it against every inch
of her skin and shivered and felt the power like that and press
harder. It was wild energy, energy that existed only for the pleasure and amusement
of its master and it nearly brought Sarah to her knees.
What's really frightening is that he's still trying to be subtle.
"Then... what?" A small tremor ran through Sarah's voice before she
clamped down on it.
"I'm offering you a chance." Jareth's voice was smooth and dangerous
as he continued. "A chance to live as you were meant to, in a world of
beauty. You can be what you pretend to be, Sarah."
What Jareth was referring to, in his own cryptic way, was the plays that Sarah
had performed in. Namely, "Camelot", "Hamlet" and "Robin
Hood". (No, not "Men in Tights". As bizarrely appropriate as
that would have been.) Given both her choice of plays and her tendency to spend
large amounts of her time in picturesque locations quoting poetry more at less
at random, it was not surprising that Jareth would see that as the ultimate
inducement.
Truth to tell, it did sound fairly tempting. Despite her newfound appreciation
for the finer points of reality, there was a lot of the old Sarah left. That
part of her was purring like a kitten, had already picked out all the names
for her ladies in waiting and had started to design her first ballgown. The
other part would rather poke her own eyes out with a knitting needle. It was
going to be a close call.
Sarah stared sightlessly into nothing, fully occupied by the mental debate.
Jareth, always one to jump up and down on the scales of Fate, was doing his
best to swing the vote his way. His voice was a constant melodic background
rhythm to the sound of Sarah's thoughts. He spoke to her of never having to
worry or be afraid or uncertain. He spoke to her of living forever in beauty,
of an eternal life lived without pain or ugliness or cruelty. And weaving through
all those threads was the final hidden meaning: he would be there with her.
Forever.
It wasn't clear whether that was a plus or a minus.
Another spontaneous outbreak of song was narrowly averted when Sarah pulled
herself back to reality. Needing space, even inches of space, she turned around
within the cage of his arms and faced the sink. She could feel Jareth behind
her, a man-shaped black hole of possibilities, pulling her towards a future
that she'd thought was dead and gone.
Sarah looked up into the mirror and froze. It wasn't just the sight of Jareth
standing breath-stealingly close behind her, watching her. It wasn't just that
the hand-dryers appeared to be forming some sort of hunting party.
No, what kept her gaze riveted to the reflective surface of the mirror was her.
Her, with her hair pulled back from her face by dark blue ribbons. Her, dressed
in a flowing tunic of midnight blue velvet with beads sparkling in it like raindrops.
(Back in her closet, the flannel was trying to explain to the unhappy neon leggings
exactly where it'd been all day. It promised to be a long explanation. It was
dreading the part where it explained how it had reappeared neatly on a hanger
amid a flash of silver and faint chiming of bells.)
Sarah let out a wordless shriek. Catching Jareth by surprise, she ducked under
one of his arms of and sped towards the exit. She paused with her hand on the
handle. "Leave. Me. Alone!" She said.
She opened the door, pausing again with it half open. Her face twisted with
something like regret. She said, "And I liked that shirt!"
The door slammed shut behind her, but not before one of the hand-dryers had
scuttled through the opening.
Jareth sighed. He'd been so close...
Perhaps it was time to look into buses to Newark.
____
End Part Six
What do I find so amusing about shirts- and hand-dryers too, for that matter?
I don't know. I'd go to a therapist, but then he might cure me. There's something
to be said for finding pleasure in small, stupid things. :)
Just as a side note, some of you have said in the comments that you're just
repeating yourself. For the love of pete, repeat yourself. Copy your earlier
comments verbatim if you like. I just like to know that, in your opinion, the
story isn't markedly deteriorating with each part. *g* (Heh. I used to have
a commenter who only gave me backwards comments. If she *really* liked something,
I'd get a three page rant about my grammar.)
AKA Jay